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Saturday, March 26, 2016

Why gender equality is the most critical of all the global goals

Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka

At the end of this month, thousands
of representatives from all over the world will gather in New York. They will
witness the launch of the most ambitious universal effort since the United
Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The reshaping and re-stating of
the "larger freedom" of those rights in a new agenda has a deadline
of 2030 for a fairer, more sustainable world, with the drive to achieve full
equality of men and womenat its center.

It is a threshold moment. Many
constituencies, far broader than governments alone, have deeply invested hope
and expectation that we have learnt enough, are committed enough, to make this
new agenda a success. Through it, we seek to impact some of the key challenges
of the 21st century, such as poverty, inequality and violence against women.
Women's empowerment is a pre-condition for this.

We know now that without gender
equality and a full role for women in society, in the economy, in governance,
we will not be able to achieve the world we hoped for. These are the changes
for which governments have repeatedly signed their support, with international
protocols on non-discrimination, and on different aspects of rights and global
goods. To date, that support has not been felt all the way through society;
consequently results have fallen short of aspiration.

We have extensive information on
what needs to be done. In 2015 we conducted a review of implementation of the
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on its 20th anniversary. As many as
167 countries reported their own successes in achieving gender equality and
women's empowerment. These reports are in effect national blueprints for
action.

Their assessments revealed important
gains in some areas, such as new or amended legislation to eliminate
discrimination against women and other barriers; improved enrollment by girls
in primary and secondary education, and progress in reducing maternal deaths.
But advances were unacceptably slow in other vital areas, such as increasing
women's access to decent work or equal pay; no country has achieved gender
equality.

There has been a critical gap
between those who draw up the commitments and those who carry them out. Gender
ministries tend to be underfunded and lack the influence and weight of larger
and stronger ministries, such as foreign affairs or treasury functions.

This is where we intend to learn
from history – and change it.

On September 27, we ask the highest leaders in each land to take personal
responsibility for their commitment to change the trajectory of gender equality
and empowerment of women. We ask those who make the undertakings to be the ones
to lead their implementation. We believe this level of engagement is crucial to
create a new cycle of history.

We have already started this path through the HeForShe campaign that
identifies IMPACT champions in top leadership positions, in government,
academia and multinational corporations. Each leader has made game-changing
undertakings – of a new order of magnitude – that will bring institutional
change to their own arena that is replicable elsewhere.

No other issue on the sustainable development agenda will receive this level
of special attention. No other issue is as critical to the success of the new
agenda as a whole.

The ambition of the 2030 Agenda must be matched with an equally ambitious
level of investment with transformative financing commitments, including
dedicated funding for women's-rights organisations. This can only happen if
governments increase budget allocations across all sectors, states meet their
official development assistance commitments, and all other sources of funding
are mobilised to achieve gender equality.

As we move toward September's threshold moment, I invite all Heads of States
and Governments to prepare for the United Nations Sustainable Development
Summit 2015 with commitments that are truly visionary, that break barriers,
provide solutions, and so put themselves, and the world they lead, on the right
side of history.

The writer is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN
Women.